Private patient records fall off truck near Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital
Confidential patient documents being taken to be destroyed have been found unattended lying on the ground by a Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital employee near the facility.
Metro North Hospital and Health Service issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon, admitting the incident occurred but claiming there was no breach of patient data.
A Metro North spokeswoman confirmed the documents fell off the back of a truck that was transporting them but could not confirm when the incident occurred, saying only that it was “recently”.
“The documents were located soon after the incident and immediately recovered,” Metro North said in the statement
“The documents were from an outpatient department at RBWH and included some patient names and information along with other non-identifying papers.
“Patients can be reassured they do not contain complete medical records.”
Queensland Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington said the incident occurred on Thursday last week, and accused the state government of sitting on the incident.
“The fact that Labor have tried to cover this up for almost a week and didn’t come clean about losing these sensitive medical records is simply not good enough," Ms Frecklington said in a statement.
“Patients should have been contacted as a first priority but instead all Labor have done is try to cover up this major fail."
The state government does not have direct jurisdiction over the day-to-day running of RBWH, which is operated by Metro North, one of the state's 16 Hospital and Health Services that were set up under the previous LNP government.
Metro North said it was working with the private contractor that was disposing of the documents to review their processes and make sure no other documents were affected.
“We are examining the documents to ascertain the level of confidential information they contain,” Metro North said.
“We will contact affected parties if required.”
Anyone who attended the RBWH as an outpatient over the last month who is concerned about their personal information can call 3646 8216 or email RBWH-PLS@health.qld.gov.au
Queensland Health routinely destroys documents it is not required to archive, outlined in the policy on its website.